FURI | Fall 2023

Optimal Pin Fin Density

This project explores optimal pin fin employment and density for heat sink applications in harsh environments. Heat sinks are used to manage heat dissipation on electronics under thermal loads. Heat sinks are commonly used in central processing units (CPUs) in computers because when running heavy processing programs, computers tend to heat up, which can lead to damaging the computer CPU. Heat sinks are placed on top of the CPU in computers to dissipate heat quickly and effectively. The optimized pin fin heat sink can be applied to spacecraft electronic packages, where spacecraft electronics experience harsh environments. The design optimization of pin fin geometry is performed using the genetic algorithm. This research compares coarsely dense pin fin geometry to less coarse pin geometry in terms of heat transfer and fluid pressure drop requirements. For the comparison, 19 experiments were designed with fixed parameters of the channel array and minimum and maximum number of pins. An optimal pin employment can reduce the thermal loads from outer space environments. As this is an ongoing problem for a lot of industries, not just space industries The final goal of this research is to find optimal pin fin employment and density for heat sink applications in harsh environments.